On Cachaperismos

After coming out as a lesbian in 1984, I began a life-long search for Latina Lesbian writers. One of my “finds” back then was Luz María Umpierre’s The Margarita Poems. I’m happy to know that Luzma’s writings continue to flow. Poet, writer and human rights advocate from Santurce, Puerto Rico, Luzma Umpierre has published poetry books, chapbooks, literary criticism and numerous articles. She is author of Una puertorriqueña en Penna, En el país de las maravillas, For Christine: Poems and One Letter, Pour Toi/ For Moira, Our Only Island—For Nemir, Nuevas aproximaciones críticas a la literatura puertoriqueña contemporánea, and Ideología y novela en Puerto Rico. An academic with a Ph.D. in Spanish, she taught in several institutions and undertook legal battles and pioneering work for the inclusion of issues of sexual orientation, gender, race, class, and ethnicity in the curriculum of universities. She’s an activist of many causes, including bilingual education, Lesbian visibility, equality for persons with AIDS and human rights. She lives in Orlando, Florida. And for today, she’s una guest columnist for La Bloga. –tatiana de la tierra